Related papers: Disordered biopolymer filament bundles: Topologica…
We investigate with experiments and novel mapping the structure of a hexagonally ordered filament bundle that is held near its ends and progressively twisted around its central axis. The filaments are free to slide relative to each other…
While actin bundles are used by living cells for structural fortification, the microscopic origin of the elasticity of bundled networks is not understood. Here, we show that above a critical concentration of the actin binding protein…
We construct a coarse-grained model of parallel actin bundles crosslinked by compact, globular bundling proteins, such as fascin and espin, necessary components of filapodial and mechanosensory bundles. Consistent with structural…
In layered materials, a common mode of deformation involves buckling of the layers under tensile deformation in the direction perpendicular to the layers. The instability mechanism, which operates in elastic materials from geological to…
Motor proteins drive persistent motion and self-organisation of cytoskeletal filaments. However, state-of-the-art microscopy techniques and continuum modelling approaches focus on large length and time scales. Here, we perform…
We develop a formalism that describes the bending and twisting of axoneme-like filament bundles. We obtain general formulas to determine the relative sliding between any arbitrary filaments in a bundle subjected to unconstrained…
Chirality frustrates and shapes the assembly of flexible filaments in rope-like, twisted bundles and fibers by introducing gradients of both filament shape (i.e. curvature) and packing throughout the structure. Previous models of chiral…
By means of extensive replica-exchange simulations of generic coarse-grained models for helical polymers, we systematically investigate the structural transitions into all possible helical phases for flexible and semiflexible elastic…
Aggregation of like-charged polymers is widely observed in biological and soft matter systems. In many systems, bundles are formed when a short-range attraction of diverse physical origin like charge-bridging, hydrogen-bonding or…
When a dilute polymer solution experiences capillary thinning, it forms an almost uniformly cylindrical thread, which we study experimentally. In the last stages of thinning, when polymers have become fully stretched, the filament becomes…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
Aiming at the mechanical properties of cross-linked biopolymers, we set up and analyze a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains subjected to a tensile force, with regularly spaced inter-chain bonds (cross-links) represented by harmonic…
Certain bacteria form filamentous colonies when the cells fail to separate after dividing. In Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thermus, and cyanobacteria, the filaments can wrap into complex supercoiled structures as the cells grow. The…
We demonstrate that a semiflexible bundle of wormlike chains exhibits a state-dependent bending stiffness that alters fundamentally its scaling behavior with respect to the standard wormlike chain. We explore the equilibrium conformational…
Chain molecules play important roles in industry and in living cells. Our focus here is on distinct ways of modeling the stiffness inherent in a chain molecule. We consider three types of stiffnesses -- one yielding an energy penalty for…
Statistical models are essential to get a better understanding of the role of disorder in brittle disordered solids. Fiber bundle models play a special role as a paradigm, with a very good balance of simplicity and non-trivial effects. We…
The actin cytoskeleton of adherent tissue cells often condenses into filament bundles contracted by myosin motors, so-called stress fibers, which play a crucial role in the mechanical interaction of cells with their environment. Stress…
The crystallization of bundles in filament networks interacting via long-range repulsions in confinement is described by a phenomenological model. The model demonstrates the formation of the hexagonal crystalline order via the interplay of…
We identify the kinks of a deformed O(3) linear Sigma model as the solutions of a set of first-order systems of equations; the above model is a generalization of the MSTB model with a three-component scalar field. Taking into account…
We study the mechanical stiffening behavior in two-dimensional (2D) cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymer filaments under simple shear. Filamental constituents immersed in a fluid undergo thermally excited bending motions.…